Chris & Trish Meyer’s series of tips, tricks, gotchas, factoids, and shortcuts continues with tips on layers in CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 9 – Blending Modes. This edition also has a video tip on tinting with solids or gradients and modes. Here’s some additional resources on blending modes…

• In AE Help: Work with layer blending modes and Exclude channels from blending.
• Tutorials with good info on modes in Photoshop are numerous. Mastering Photoshop’s Blending Modes by Richard Harrington is succinct (there are others also on Tip Squirrel). Also, Adobe’s Julieanne Kost had a series of recent posts on blend modes in Photoshop.
• Chris Meyer also looked at Blend Modes in Adobe Premiere Pro and earlier, Composite Modes in Final Cut Pro.
• Blend Modes on Collapsed Layers via the AE team from Motionworks.
• Mark Christiansen has a tip on Linear Blending at Any Color Depth in After Effects.
• Subtract and Divide blend modes were added to After Effects CS5; Todd Kopriva noted related tutorials. Ben Rollason showed how to emulate these modes in AE CS4 in Subtract and Divide Blending Modes in AE CS4.
• Here’s a sample tutorial on blending modes from After Effects CS5: Learn by Video by Angie Taylor and Todd Kopriva, courtesy of Peachpit (this embed may behave better on Firefox than Chrome):

Chris and Trish Meyer are taking the lessons in their book After Effects Apprentice and recording them as a video training series at Lynda.com. If they’re like the book, the lessons will be project-based and methodical yet gentle.

The first three courses were just released behind the curtain at Lynda.com. There’s details and a link to a trial  for Lynda.com (without the projects) at PVC.

Additional options for basic training include the shorter intros on CS4 from the DVD of After Effects Apprentice, which are also available from Focal Press and PVC, and Aetuts+ AE for Beginners and others in the Basix category.

Here’s an example of from the new series which explains how to create an overshoot effect with only two keyframes, with insight into how animation curves operate in After Effects:

Andrew Kramer is back quickly with Stroke FX, another tutorial that uses the built-in Vegas filter in After Effects…

This tutorial uses “multiple strokes to build high-impact graphics in After Effects. This relatively simple trick is a great way to make your titles pop and stand out. All of the strokes are dynamic so if you change the font or text, the graphics will update automatically. We also use the Vegas effect to add dotted lines and even Vegas lights. This is a lot of versatility in this technique so get creative!”

The latest meeting of AENY, the New York City After Effects user group, was cancelled but part of the presentation was posted by AE Scripts…

Stu Maschwitz posted a color correcting session, Color Correcting Food with Colorista II. Stu says his “favorite bit is at 09:00 – about why colors blow out ugly on video and how to fix it.”

Prolost has a bunch of tutorials and related posts, like Color Correcting Canon 7D Footage and Colorista II Tutorials (6 videos).

Here’s the session, which uses DV Rebel Tools script and more; there’s more on Prolost:

AE Scripts and Mamoworld now offer ExpressionTimeline, a new After Effects script that lets you combine and modify expressions without editing the code itself.

This script makes it easier to:

• make expressions be active only for a certain period of time
• add more than one expression to a property
• fade expressions in and out smoothly
• transition smoothly from one expression to the next one

Here’s a short demo; for a full tutorial visit Mamoworld:

Twice a month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from back in the archives of Aetuts+. Today we’ll look at a tutorial originally published in March 2009 by Nick Campbell. Enjoy!

In his first tutorial for us he shows us how to create this awesome 80′s style title animation. He covers a whole bunch of awesome little tips that are sure be useful on any After Effects project.

Tutorial

Additional Aetuts+ Resources

• Rewind Your Animation Like An Old VHS Tape – Day 1
• How to Make “When I Was Your Age” Footage
• A Handy Hassle-Free Stop Motion Look
• The Projector – Old School Movie Intro Walkthrough

In this tutorial we’ll explain how to make the “Inception V2″ flying logo style, using Cinema 4D v12 and After Effects. First, we’ll be modeling a logo fracture with Mograph. Then we’ll follow in After Effects compositing everything together with effects. For Premium Members, I’ve included the version of the Inception Inline font, with letters to compose the Inception logo. Cheers!!

Tutorial

Additional Aetuts+ Resources

• Discover How To Recreate the Sherlock Holmes End Credits Effect
• Give Your Title A “Gamer” Like Glitch
• Create Harry Potter Titles
• Create Mac OSX Intro Video with C4D
• Recreate Your Own “Tron” Title Opener

Via FilmakerIQ is Top 5 Easy Adobe After Effects Expressions by Sean Bowers, the first episode of a “Fix it in Post” series from NextWaveDV (embedded below).

For something comparable, My 5 Favorite Expressions by Harry Frank comes to mind, as does an Andrew Devis video Hidden Templates & Powerful Expressions. There’s more on expressions in AE Help, the piled-on post Expressions & Scripting Resources for After Effects and others at AE Portal, and in various video tutorials at AEtuts+, for example a 5-part series by Frederik Steinmetz, Introduction To Writing Scripts For AE.

Andrew Kramer released his “Tron-Pilot” After Effects CS4 project file and a short video walk-through which describes creating the faux 3D text in AE (adding the Vegas filter) and building a few expressions. The project was previewed in December.

There’s some other tutorials to mimic the TRON look, and some background on the VFX of TRON: Legacy from Fxguide (on face replacement effects) and in numerous “Making of” videos like those posted by Digital Domain. Here’s a few more tutorials for After Effects, veering off with a few on neon:

But what if Saul Bass had done the titles for TRON?

Just because you missed that awesome conference, doesn’t mean that you can’t still watch the lectures! This weekend, we feature an inspiring talk that Paula Scher did at TED. She looks back at a life in design (she’s done album covers, books, the Citibank logo …) and pinpoints the moment when she started really having fun. Look for gorgeous designs and images from her legendary career.

Continue reading “Paula Scher Gets Serious”